Evaluate your knowledge of psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) with this helpful quiz and worksheet combination. You can take this quiz on the go using a.

This article needs additional citations for. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( May 2015) () Psychoneuroimmunology ( PNI), also referred to as psychoendoneuroimmunology ( PENI) or psychoneuroendocrinoimmunology ( PNEI), is the study of the interaction between psychological processes and the nervous and immune systems of the human body. PNI takes an interdisciplinary approach, incorporating,,,,,,,,,,,.

The main interests of PNI are the interactions between the and systems and the relationships between mental processes. PNI studies, among other things, the functioning of the neuroimmune system in health and disease; disorders of the neuroimmune system (;; ); and the physical, chemical and physiological characteristics of the components of the neuroimmune system,,. Claude Bernard, the father of modern physiology, with his pupils, a French physiologist of the, formulated the concept of the in the mid-1800s. In 1865, Bernard described the perturbation of this internal state: '. There are protective functions of organic elements holding living materials in reserve and maintaining without interruption humidity, heat and other conditions indispensable to vital activity.

Sickness and death are only a dislocation or perturbation of that mechanism' (Bernard, 1865)., a professor of physiology at coined the commonly used term,, in his book The Wisdom of the Body, 1932, from the word homoios, meaning similar, and stasis, meaning position. In his work with animals, Cannon observed that any change of emotional state in the beast, such as,, or, was accompanied by total cessation of movements of the stomach ( Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage, 1915). These studies looked into the relationship between the effects of emotions and perceptions on the, namely the and responses that initiated the recognition of the. His findings were published from time to time in professional journals, then summed up in book form in The Mechanical Factors of Digestion, published in 1911. Bust of Hans Selye at,,, a student of and, and a researcher at, experimented with animals by putting them under different physical and mental adverse conditions and noted that under these difficult conditions the body consistently to heal and recover. Several years of experimentation that formed the empiric foundation of Selye's concept of the.

This syndrome consists of an enlargement of the gland, atrophy of the,, and other tissue, and gastric. Selye describes three stages of adaptation, including an initial brief alarm reaction, followed by a prolonged period of resistance, and a terminal stage of exhaustion and death. This foundational work led to a rich line of research on the biological functioning of.

Mid-20th century studies of psychiatric patients reported immune alterations in psychotic individuals, including lower numbers of and poorer response to, compared with nonpsychiatric control subjects. In 1964, George F. Solomon, from the, and his research team coined the term 'psychoimmunology' and published a landmark paper: 'Emotions, immunity, and disease: a speculative theoretical integration.' Origins [ ] In 1975, and, at the, advanced PNI with their demonstration of of immune function, and they subsequently coined the term 'psychoneuroimmunology'. Ader was investigating how long conditioned responses (in the sense of 's conditioning of dogs to drool when they heard a bell ring) might last in laboratory rats.

To condition the rats, he used a combination [ ] of -laced water (the conditioned stimulus) and the drug, which unconditionally induces and suppression of immune function. Ader was surprised to discover that after conditioning, just feeding the rats saccharin-laced water was associated with the death of some animals and he proposed that they had been immunosuppressed after receiving the conditioned stimulus. Ader (a psychologist) and Cohen (an immunologist) directly tested this hypothesis by deliberately immunizing conditioned and unconditioned animals, exposing these and other control groups to the conditioned taste stimulus, and then measuring the amount of antibody produced. The highly reproducible results revealed that conditioned rats exposed to the conditioned stimulus were indeed immuno suppressed. In other words, a signal via the nervous system (taste) was affecting immune function. This was one of the first scientific experiments that demonstrated that the nervous system can affect the immune system. In the 1970s,, and, working in Switzerland, reported multi-directional immune-neuro-endocrine interactions, since they show that not only the brain can influence immune processes but also the immune response itself can affect the brain and neuroendocrine mechanisms.